Sunday, March 15, 2009

Researchers scanned the brains of certain men as they looked at a photograph of a woman in a bikini and discovered that sections of the brain that usually reacted to objects lit up.

With men, who were known to have sexist tendencies, they also discovered that a part of the brain that usually turned on during social interaction actually de-activated when they saw the photograph.

Professor Susan Fiske, of Princeton University, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting that she believes that the results show that some men did not see sexualised women as a "human".

"I am not saying that they literally see them as an object, of course they know she is human," she said.

"But what the brain scans show is that they are reacting to this photograph as people react to objects. It is as if they are not fully human.

"They are not treating them as fully three dimensional humans."

She said that the constant bombardment of society with sexualised images of young women could be to blame and that it "decreased the extinct that they were seen as human".

She said the effect was rather like violence on television that studies had shown to desensitise people to the affects of violence.

"I think that there is a parallel in seeing lots of sexualised women," she added. "You get used to it."

She said the effect was particularly powerful in the workplace and that studies had shown that men interviewing sexually attractive women behaved very differently towards them than other women and men.